Okay, so we’ve been talking a lot about Pokemon lately, but can you blame us? Pokemon Sword and Pokemon Shield were announced, and we’re absolutely stoked! Lately, Rachel’s been watching Pokemon the anime series on Netflix, and one of the few (out of 21) seasons that is available is the XYZ season, the end of the characters’ adventures in the Kalos region. I started watching it around the end of the season with the Pokemon League, and found myself really enjoying it.

I stopped watching the anime a while ago. It was something that was hard for me to keep up with but I always wanted to catch up with it. Netflix has the two XY seasons and the one XYZ seasons. So, I binged all three seasons (roughly 45 episodes each) in a little over a week… yeah. But let me tell you, the Kalos region in the anime is an amazing thing. They did a fabulous job with this particular series.

Honestly, I remember much of the Indigo League, the Orange Islands, and some of Johto. I watched a few episodes of Hoenn and Sinnoh here and there, but when Brock left, I lost interest in the anime, haha. However, seeing how fluid the animation of the battles in the Kalos League and the involved plot for the last dozen or so episodes were, I was impressed. I’ll have to catch up with the rest of the Kalos region when I find the time.

Brock, Misty, and Ash were definitely an awesome combination. However, I fell in love with all the characters in XY and XYZ. Professor Sycamore is probably my favorite Pokemon Professor now. He was hardy, good looking, and definitely knew what’s up. Ash no longer felt like a ten-year-old stupidhead. He was actually fairly mature. Clemont and Bonnie had the most adorable brother-sister relationship and both pulled their own weight in the series. It took me a few episodes to get used to Serena, but she was an awesome female lead as well. I honestly have to say, aside from Brock and Misty, I think this is my favorite group.

I think I was a little salty that Misty left the core group for the Hoenn and Sinnoh seasons of the anime. I didn’t really have much against the other female leads, it was just a younger me being annoyed that a character I liked had left. Of course, being a little older, I can appreciate that the characters nowadays each have their own dreams and goals rather than just following Ash around. It’s an important realization of growing up and it’s a bittersweet touch to the end of the seasons. I did enjoy the Kalos group, seeing that the episodes gave them equal time while still pitting Ash as the main character. Having Ash be more of a teen rather than a kid — letting him age up a little with the majority of the folks who first started watching the anime — was a good move as well.

The series as a whole went at a good pace as well. There was Ash’s adventure but there was also something else lurking around. Once the Kalos League was over, that’s when everything went to hell and the plot really happened. From then on, there were about ten or so episodes of non-stop intense action. We were trying to play our Pokemon games for our Three-Type Challenge while watching the show and we ending up putting the games away and just got sucked into the ending.

Honestly, the last few episodes of the Kalos seasons made me wish even more that we got a Pokemon Z game. The anime really expanded on the plot that was shown in the X and Y games — actually, Rachel, did the XY series of the show do the games’ plot line? — and I would have loved being part of a save the world story like Ash was in the anime. The last few episodes were bittersweet as well, showing the characters figuring out what they wanted to do with their lives and telling each other, “See you later!” rather than “Goodbye.”

The plot was more so in XYZ rather than XY. But it was all awesome all the same. The series as a whole had great characters, an awesome adventure, epic Pokemon battles, and Team Rocket… love Team Rocket. If you don’t watch Pokemon that much but wouldn’t mind giving it a try, Kalos is great a series to do so.

Do you still watch the Pokemon anime? Let us know in the comments below! If you like this post, please share it around.

It’s no secret that I love Pokemon cards. I have little clue how to play the trading card game, but I love collecting them and organizing them. I’m super excited for the Detective Pikachu movie and they’re coming out with Pokemon cards based on the movie!

The Detective Pikachu Pokemon cards are set to come out on March 29, 2019. Though, I believe, that’s Japan. It think they’ll be out everywhere else by April 6, 2019. (Unless things changed and my wires got crossed somewhere.)

As of right now, the set is going to have a total of 26 cards – 18 normal and 8 secret. The secret cards are, of course, still secret. However, Serebii has shown the 18 known cards. Some Pokemon are well-known such as Bulbasaur, Charmander, Jigglypuff, and of course, Detective Pikachu. There are some other Pokemon that I’m surprised to see have cards made from the movie such as Slaking and Morelull. However, I’m assuming they’ll have a decent part in the movie.

All the cards look pretty cool! I’m excited to try to collect them all especially since there’s only 26 (as of right now). My wallet may not like it so much and neither will my binders filled with Pokemon cards because… well, I’m running out of room.

I definitely need to sit down and go through my cards again.

Something else I need to do? Make a list and try to collect every single Pokemon card known to man. I doubt that will ever happen, but I can sure try.

Do you get Pokemon cards? Will you be getting this set? Let me know in the comments below! If you liked this post, please share it around.

Last month, Rachel and I decided to put a new twist on our Pokemon games. Generally, both of us go on our journeys in the core series with well-rounded teams — Rachel usually has an idea as to which types and Pokemon she wants, while I just go and collect Pokemon of different types that I think are pretty cool. For this challenge, we were each randomly assigned a trio of types that we could use, as well as a random region to go through.

Kris had to only have Pokemon that had the types Ground, Dark, and Dragon on her team. I was only allowed Normal, Electric, and Bug on my team. We also randomly generated which region we’d be in. Kris got a Hoenn Pokemon from the generator so she played Alpha Sapphire. I got a Unova Pokemon so I played White 2. It was… actually harder than we thought it would be.

While I’ve trained my fair share of Ground and Dark type Pokemon, Dragon was a type I wasn’t too experienced in and it was a bit difficult to find Pokemon that fit those three typings. I played by the rule that if at least one of a Pokemon’s types matched one of my three, then I could use it, such as Numel being Fire and Ground type. I also caught a Swablu due to its evolution being part Dragon. My Nincada, on the other hand, will never evolve as it’ll lose its Ground typing if it becomes a Ninjask.

I played a little differently than Kris. I wanted all my Pokemon to exclusively be Bug, Electric, or Normal. So, my party consisted of Stoutland, Audino, Karrablast, Shelmet, Galvantula, and Tynamo. So I had at least two Normal, two Bug, and two Electric. I look at the game guide and made up my team before I started playing to make sure it was doable. The thing was, I went through the first five gyms with just Stoutland and Audino because the other four weren’t available to catch until later. At that point, the grinding to get the other four caught up in levels was a pain.

My way of playing was just to go through the adventure naturally and only catch those that had at least one of my typings (with the occasional Zigzagoon when I needed HM help). The first three gyms I only had Mightyena and Nincada, and I was able to catch Numel, Swablu, Cacnea, and Trapinch later. Grinding was definitely annoying, and I found myself with fainted Pokemon much more often in trainer battles than I ever have before due to the type weaknesses. You have to keep your team a little over leveled to account for their type weaknesses, which slows down the game play a bit.

Yes, my Pokemon fainted a lot more than I usually let them too. As for HMs, I actually didn’t need to use any until after the fifth gym. It was surf – that Audino can learn – and strength – that Stoutland can learn. Unfortunately, we weren’t able to actually beat our games within our challenge timeline. I breezed right through the game up until right before the sixth gym where I needed to grind a lot. Though I plan on continuing to play this file and play at my own pace. I want this team to go through the Elite Four!

Oh, yes, I’m planning on continuing this file as well. We’re just about ready to face the fifth gym leader, so we’ll see how that goes! Aside from the grinding, it’s a fun challenge to try. Out of my team, Mightyena and Nincada are the only Pokemon I’ve trained before. The others are all brand-new to me, so giving them a chance in battle is definitely interesting. I wouldn’t mind trying a challenge like this again!

I agree, this challenge has allowed me to branch out with new Pokemon. I rarely have Normal or Bug Pokemon on my team. I would definitely try this challenge as well too. We’ll have to remember this idea for another time… Maybe even for Pokemon Sword and Pokemon Shield down the line!

What did you think of the challenge? Did you try it? Let us know in the comments below! If you like this post, please share it around.

Like a couple of weeks ago, this Friday’s Favorites post is dedicated to a wish list. With Nintendo’s latest Pokemon direct, there is so much speculation and hope about the newest Pokemon games coming out, Sword and Shield. Here is what I wish to see in the games.

True Co-Op

I have no idea how plausible this is. However, when the Let’s Go duo was released and boasted a co-op mode, Rachel and I were disappointed at it. Granted, it was fun seeing another trainer run around with you in the over world and help out with battles, but it wasn’t what we expected or wanted. I would love to see a co-op mode where your trainer is exploring and battling on their own, but your friend’s trainer is still there in the over world doing their own thing as well. I want to experience the journey with my friend’s avatar there beside mine, even if all we get is just seeing the other avatar running around. Of course, granting us the option to do double-battles together, each with our own Pokemon, against NPCs would be awesome. We’re able to go online with Smash and Mario Kart together — why not Pokemon? (Or would this be too close to a Pokemon MMORPG?)

Pokemon Following the MC

I don’t remember seeing Pokemon following the main characters around in Sword and Shield’s footage from the direct. I understand that not all the footage was from the game and the game itself wouldn’t be finalized just yet, so I’m remaining optimistic that they keep the option of having your Pokemon follow you around as you explore the region. It was adorable, fun, and since random battles seem to be back rather than over world Pokemon, it’ll help the game seem more alive.

A Good Story

I want to be completely invested in the plot line of Sword and Shield’s adventure. I’m sure it’ll boil down to the world needs to be saved by your young MC, but still. Give me a story to truly care about. I adored the story lines involving the regions’ legendaries in the earlier generations, especially Johto and Hoenn, and I severely miss the extra oomph that the stories received in the third-tier games. Speaking of which…

A Third Game

This is obviously a long way off, but I would love it if Nintendo went back to bolstering the story lines of the games with a third game for the region. Crystal and Emerald were some of my favorites and I was seriously disappointed that Black 2 and White 2 existed instead of Pokemon Gray for the Unova region. Ultra Sun and Ultra Moon didn’t bring much of anything new to the Alola region, and poor Kalos was skipped out entirely when a plot line involving Zygarde could have been created to balance out X and Y. I’m hoping Sword and Shield will break the trend of “sequel” games for the Galar region and give us a more in-depth story with a third Galar game.

Are you looking forward to Pokemon Sword and Pokemon Shield? What are you hoping for in the new Pokemon generation? Let me know in the comments below! If you liked this post, please share it around.

The Pokemon Direct on Wednesday morning was only about 7 minutes long, but we have yet to see too many complaints about it. All things considered, I was pleased with what I saw of the Generation 8 Pokemon games. Pretty sure one of my favorite parts of it was the reveal that gyms would be returning!

I have to admit, I was expecting generation eight reveals, but I was also thinking there would be other announcements. I’m certainly not complaining though! What they showed off of the Galar Region was amazing. The world looks beautiful and yes, I’m eager to collect badges again.

The graphics definitely look gorgeous on the Switch, and the world itself looks so much more detailed than the Let’s Go titles. The character designs look fun — I was really amused at how large the male character’s backpack was! The starters themselves look cute. I’ll definitely be going with Grookey, since I usually go for the Grass-type starters anyway. Sobble looks adorable, though!

All the main starters are adorable. I’m excited to have a bunny as the fire-type! I’m super curious as to what they’re final evolution and typing will be. I’m also looking forward to finding out more information about the legendary Pokemon. For the titles Sword and Shield, I don’t know what they’ll do. I have a feeling they’ll be wolf-like though, of course.

Think the Scorbunny will end up being Fire and Fighting type? One of the things that Alola had in its favor was the secondary typing of the starters’ final evolutions. Ghost, Dark, and Fairy were great, but it would be interesting to have other, unique secondary types for the starters. The titles Sword and Shield are awesome and I’m hoping they have a fun story and plotline to go along with them. I’m totally up for canine-like legendaries!

I don’t know, I feel like they’ve had so many Fire/Fighting Pokemon, especially for the starters. For some reason, Scorbunny looks like it could be Fire/Electric. Grookey maybe Grass/Ground and Sobble Water/Bug. I honestly would love to see opposite types together. I know it won’t happen with Sword & Shield (if at all) but I think it’d be cool to have starters that are Fire/Water, Water/Grass, Grass/Fire. But now I’m rambling – anyway, canine legendaries would be awesome. I wonder if it’ll be two versions of a similar Pokemon (kind of like Articuno, Zapdos, and Moltres) or if they’ll somehow be different (like Solgaleo and Lunala). But both looked like they were wolves or something.

Oh, I know, I’m joking. I’m convinced that Incineroar, with its design, was originally going to be Fire/Fighting, but so many people were sick of that typing that they changed it to Fire/Dark. Ground is starting to be a bit overused with the Grass starters, but there’s not many Water/Bug types. Going back to Sword and Shield, I wonder if the legendary Pokemon and the story itself will have some sort of medieval angle. I think the logos of the games remind me of crests from royal families or knights. Generation 5’s story played with a royal family angle, didn’t it?

Ground is starting to get overused with Grass, I agree. But Grookey’s coloring reminds me of Grass/Ground. Grass/Rock would be cool too. A medieval angle would be cool. I mean, the story will more or less be the same as all the other Pokemon games, I think. I was surprised to see the Galar map. It’s long and seems like the journey will be fairly linear. Which isn’t a bad thing, but it’s definitely different than before.

Grass/Rock would be interesting. I miss the Grass/Poison typing that Venusaur has, admittedly. Yes, I’m sure the story will involve some team or other trying to take over or change the world while using Pokemon, and the fate of the world will rest on the shoulders of our pre-teen protagonist. Still, I hope the lore of the region is well done. If the lore is well done enough, I would absolutely love it if the region got a third game. I wasn’t thrilled with the “sequels” of Black 2/White 2 and Ultra Sun/Ultra Moon — we should have gotten a Gray and Eclipse for those regions, respectively. We also totally missed out on another game for the Kalos region. There should have been a Pokemon Z for Zygarde. I suppose those are a bit of a ways off, though. For now, I’m definitely looking forward to Sword and Shield.

I totally agree. We should have had third installments for Unova, Kalos, and Alola. I understand they want to make more money, but I think they have plenty and the third volumes are what people seem to really enjoy. Here’s hoping to Pokemon Armor when the time comes! In the meantime, I can’t wait for Pokemon Sword and Pokemon Shield… late 2019 most likely means November. It’ll be here before we know it.

What did you think of Pokemon Sword and Pokemon Shield? Let us know in the comments below! If you like this post, please share it around.

Happy belated birthday to Double Jump! Back on February 3rd, our little blog turned three years old! They grow so fast… It’s been quite a year, actually, with some changes and updates made to our blog and Double Jump as a whole.

We might have thought Double Jump’s birthday was February 16th, which is why we never said anything on the actual birthday. Yeah, a lot has changed since the beginning of Double Jump. Not just with the blog, but we’ve branched out quite a bit between collabs, streaming, and more.

By “we,” we mean Rachel, but at least she remembered around the time the blog’s birthday was. I vaguely remembered that it was in February and that’s about it. Considering the original intent of this blog when we started it three years ago was to branch out and maybe connect with others who also enjoyed gaming, I’m pretty proud of the connections we made due to collab posts and our Twitch channel.

For sure. We’ve come a long way in these past three years. To “celebrate,” if you will, we’ve decided to do another gaming challenge! We chose for this challenge to be Pokemon based because… well, we love Pokemon, so why not? We’re not necessarily competing against each other or racing one another. We’ll be doing the same thing differently. If that makes any sense at all.

We each used a randomizer to pick only three of the eighteen Pokemon types for us to raise for a play-through of one of the core games. My random types are Dark, Dragon, and Ground, which sounds like a decent balance of physical and special attacks. I’m excited to have Ground, as it’s one of my favorites, and Dark is right up there as well. Dragon may be interesting, as that is one of the rarer types.

The random types I got were Electric, Normal, and Bug. That will certainly be an interesting team. I’ve raised electric and normal a ton but I’ve only ever raised a bug once. We then randomized which game we’ll each play. I got a Pokemon from the Unova region so I’ll be playing either Black, White, Black 2, or White 2. Most likely one of the sequels.

My region is Hoenn, which I’m totally fine with. It’s been a while since I’ve played through those games, and I’ll probably pick one of the remakes to play rather than the original Ruby, Sapphire, and Emerald trio. We’ve decided that Legendaries are off-limits — so no Latias or Latios for me — but we can train any Pokemon that has the types that we generated, whether it be the first or secondary type. So, Rachel, with Normal, you could have a much more varied team than I will. A lot of Flying-type Pokemon are also Normal-type, at the very least. Like Rachel mentioned, this challenge is more about the journey rather than a winner, so we’ll see how our teams and games go.

It’ll certainly be interesting to see how our journey goes. I know it’s not a competition, but I’m curious who will get to the Champion first or how many Pokemon will faint. Unova isn’t my favorite, but I’m excited to go back there and explore it once again.

Thanks for three years with us! Let us know what you think of our Pokemon challenge in the comments below. If you enjoyed this post, please share it around.

The other day, Kris discovered a new Pokemon Trading Card Game pack called Team Up. This is the ninth expansion pack for the Sun & Moon TCG. This expansion has an emphasis on the Kanto region, though it has Pokemon from all over. Team Up packs may have special duo GX cards such as Pikachu-Zekrom-GX. Team Up was released on February 1, 2019 and we went out and bought some the following day.

Rachel has a huge collection of Pokemon cards while Kris has none. So, we went out and Rachel was eager to get the four booster packs of Team Up – Pikachu & Zekrom, Eevee & Snorlax, Gengar & Mimikyu, and Venusaur & Celebi. While Rachel didn’t get any of the team GX cards, she got some other great cards including an Incineroar GX.

Kris, on the other hand, bought two themed decks along with a mini binder that had a Team Up booster pack inside. With those 130 cards, she’s starting off her collection quite nicely with a mini binder that holds about 60 cards as well.

In the Team Pack expansion, there are about 196 cards in all – 181 plus 15 secret cards. (According to Bulbapedia, that its.) We’re determined to catch ’em all!

Do you collect Pokemon cards? Have you gotten Team Up yet? Let us know in the comments below!

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